Anther
by ebonbird
Summary: Before Utena, the Rose Bride had a hero in Saionji. AU.


Title: Anther  
Summary: Suppose, Mikage showed up earlier in the games?

* * *

Saionji has won the Rose Bride.

Himemeya Anthy is the Rose Bride. Her full red skirts flare around her. Her waist is so small, so sweet, so slender. She wears glasses. They make her look studious. But that's not quite true, because the glow that surrounded her when she lay back and Mikage bent over her and unsheathed the sword from her delicate breast is the glow of diamonds on fire and dust motes twinkling in a shaft of sunlight; white breakers at afternoon; headlights-- bright and cool, and vibrant and powerful, smiles and secrets all around them.

That glow is reflected in the sparkle over her eyes. He can't see his Anthy. He can't see her, the prize-- Anthy liberated.

The Victor holds the sword in a hand unused to the pommel. The scent of roses is strong. That, and the odor of sweat and saliva. The Victor, Saionji, wipes his cheek. There is spit on his face. With the back of his sword hand he wipes his upper lip. Mucous.

He is panting. He's won.

Anthy watches him. She wears a red gown he's never seen before. The top of it looks like a student council uniform, but her slender, shapely arms are bare. Her slim hands are crossed in front of her, almost lost in the folds of skirts. Her breasts are wondrous, and that face above her narrow shoulders with the enormous eyes that stared and stared at him when he trained hard and harder at swordplay and fencing.

Help me, they said, while Juri and Touga passed her back and forth between them. She carried their books, walked a step behind them. Why is she always with either one of you? he'd asked. And Touga told him that it was a game that he and Juri, just the two of them, shared, and Anthy played along.

He received a rose signet from "The End of the Worlds". And he remembered the rumors. Slut. Whore. Low self-esteem. She likes duelists. School champion can do whatever he wants with her... But dueling at Ohtori was the secret of secrets.

Before that, Saionji learned roses from Anthy. Or he tried to. He kept falling into the cadence of her speech, the drib of water out of the watering can, the smells of the fertilizer, and the snip of her pruning sheers. She only wanted to spend time with her garden, really. She glowed there. She even initiated conversation there, but one day she didn't meet him there for lunch-- they'd made the habit-- and when he went to find her, she was in the company of Mikage.

"I am done with roses," she told him, but her great green eyes had begged him for... What? Something.

_Help me, Saionji-san_, her eyes said when she shadowed Souji Mikage for that one week and, he never felt the sun's rays on his face though the sky was clear and it never rained after, he came upon the glass dome of the greenhouse, lit up long after curfew.

He knocked before entering, though he knew that only Anthy would be there, could be there, that late. She'd met his stare head-on, but her cheeks had been tear-stained. She was snipping rose-blooms off at the stem.

"Why?" he'd breathed.

"Mikage-sama says I am done with all roses until I make him a black one."

I'll kill him, kill him, he swore, said it aloud, and Anthy had turned her narrow back to him. He'd seen her hair, long and darker than dusk, with purple dusk-light in it and trailed halfway down her back, and the ends were mangled. That was when he noticed the hair on the ground. It was Anthy's by the color. By its miraculous length, it must have fallen to her ankles unbound.

Saionji roared at her, stood over her and made her cower with his height and his voice and his wavy, luxuriant hair-- the envy of all the girls of Ohtori Academy, and some of the boys-- crackled with static and fury. Anthy bowed, bent sideways from him. Her shoulders curved towards one another and she averted her gaze. Her eyelashes were the longest he'd ever seen. 

"Do you love him? Do you want this?"

"I am the Rose Bride," she'd murmured. "There's no use in wanting or loving anyone or anything."

He made Touga tell him about the duels. And Touga added that Anthy had been his fiancee, and then Juri's depending on who won what particular bout. 

"You mean, if you told her to strip naked and run through the volleyball court, she'd do it?"

"How predictably perverse, Saionji," Touga had chuckled. "I suppose if it occurred to her fiancee-- that would have been me the week before last-- yes."

Those deep green eyes are shuttered. Bells are ringing. Bells have been ringing. They ring no longer. There is no silence because he's breathing so hard. He can't catch his breath. She won't look at him, the Victor.

"Don't fear me, Anthy." Saionji had whispered as she shrank from his rage in the glass rose cage. He'd fallen to his knees before her and gathered up her butchered hair; and the roses caught in the strands stabbed him with thorns though Anthy had snipped them at the base of the blooms.

He did it. He freed her.

"I did it, Anthy," Saionji breathes, then proclaims: "Mikage'll never hurt you again."

Impassive that oval shaped face. The expression gives nothing away, just like the old lady hairstyle of Anthy's gave nothing of the amazing length and body of her hair away, but it's clear all the same, how happy and relieved she is.

"No one," grits Saionji, "No one will ever hurt you again." He is surprised by his victory. He hurts too much to move. If he moves, he'll fall over, and he doesn't want to look weak in front of Anthy.

"I am your Rose Bride," Anthy says.

Then, she floats to him. She floats, she seems to, and her skirts whisper and wave. She lifts her hand to his arm, lowers his arm in its dark blue tunic and draws it down. He's been holding it up. No girl at Ohtori Academy has skin like Anthy's. It's so dark, and flawless next to his. Her hand is as soft as it looks. Saionji's eyes flutter shut at her touch.

Tired, exhausted, he leans his sinewey weight on Anthy's shoulder. She holds him close around his waist, feeling the sweaty, close-weaved cotton.

Does he stink? he wonders, ashamed. He doesn't care. Anthy smells of roses, roses, roses and roses...

He wraps one arm around her, inhaling. She's been sweating. She was frightened, but over it all, roses.

She's speaking to him. "...Hmmm?" he says.

"...The sword, Saionji-sempai. You must sheathe it, please."

She takes his hand from where it is at her waist. Pulls at it until he lets it go-- his hand goes up to her chest, between Her red covered breasts...

"Here," Anthy says. But she's glowing. Her teeth transparent around their smooth edges and dark at their centers. She's glowing. They both are: and he dips her, and he presses the tip of the sword against her chest, between her breasts. Worried, he furrows his brow at her. He trusts her. She knows things. Knows him. His sweat-soaked hair falls straight over his face. 

"Anthy," he whines. "I can't." 

"Saionji-sempai, you must."

His eyes are full of questions. He's his real age, stripped of all confidence and certainty-- seventeen.

She nods. She's so beautiful. Her lips are the same color as her skin. The exact color. Her lips are so finely drawn that unless she is talking he cannot see where they end and the skin begins unless he's as close to her as he is now. Her lips are small and full. They part.

She tightens in his arms, trembles. She is in pain. Saionji screams. The sword is sunk partway in her chest. There is no blood. The sword wants to sink in, in, and he grabs hold of pommel and resists.

Anthy gasps. From far away, when Mikage drew the sword from Anthy's chest it looked pleasurable. For Mikage anyway. Anthy seemed indifferent. From up close, from the shaking in his arms and the acrid smell of fear rolling off her, mingling with the scent of roses, Saionji knows it hurts. Though there is no blood. Though as the Rose Bride, she has sheathed this sword a dozen (hundreds of dozens) of times.

He won't do it. He won't hurt Anthy this way.

Gritting his teeth, growling, Saionji summons strengths and pulls back on the pommel. Dios light balls and bells around them, splashing down the length of the sword. Saionji pulls up on the sword. It struggles in his grip like a live thing, like lightning, and his fingers tingle and hurt and he almost lets the sword go.

Bells are ringing. No. Anthy's screaming.

Anthy screams and screams and screams and his face torqued in fear and anguish, Saionji flows with the blaze and stabs her through.

-0-


End file.
